Fifty-six percent of the employees of hotels and restaurants in the 27-member European Union (EU) were women, Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said on Wednesday.
In the tourist accommodation sector, which includes hotels and other short-stay accommodation, the share of women was even higher, at 62 percent, said Eurostat.
The ratio of women employed in hotels and restaurants is much higher than the average for all sectors in the EU. In 2006, 44 percent of all those employed in the EU were women.
The figures for 2006 came just one day ahead of the International Day of Tourism, which falls on Thursday.
The UN World Tourism Organization has declared this year's day an occasion to celebrate women's achievements in the tourism sector and stimulate action in support of gender equality and the empowerment of women.
In 22 member states, the share of women in the hotels and restaurants sector was 50 percent or more, with the highest registered in the Baltic states -- 76 percent in Estonia, 83 percent in Lithuania and 95 percent in Latvia.
Only in four member states, there were fewer women than men working in hotels and restaurants -- Malta (28 percent), Greece (44 percent), Italy and France (both 49 percent).
Among all the member states, annual average gross earnings for women were lower than for men in 2005. This was the case both in industry and market services sector and in the hotels and restaurants sector.
The smallest difference between women and men in the hotels and restaurants sector in 2005 was found in Belgium, where women earned 93 percent of their male colleagues' annual average gross earnings.
However, the differences in average earnings do not necessarily reflect a gap in pay between women and men, since women and men do not occupy the same jobs.
Source: Xinhua
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